Public schooling is state control, red or blue
Public schooling isn’t education, it’s state-run indoctrination. Red state or blue state, both sides fight to own your kids’ minds.
Let’s stop pretending there’s a “good” side when it comes to public schooling. There isn’t.
Whether it’s a red state jamming “America-First” tests down your kid’s throat or a blue state force-feeding “Equity & Inclusion” modules, the reality’s the same: The state owns the classroom, and your kid’s the product.
Oklahoma’s new America-First requirement is just the latest example. It’s marketed as a way to “preserve our values” and “protect kids from bias.” That’s exactly the same pitch California makes when it defends its diversity mandates. The slogans are different.
The tactic is identical: Grab the levers of state power, force your worldview into every textbook, and tell parents they should be grateful.
They distract you with the culture war
The “mainstream” Left loves to claim they’re liberating students from conservative brainwashing. The “mainstream” Right swears they’re rescuing kids from liberal indoctrination. But the truth neither side wants to admit is that they’re both indoctrinating.
The state school system is a monopoly, and it doesn’t matter if Republicans or Democrats run it.
The system shapes young minds into whatever model the current rulers find acceptable. And since that model can change in every election cycle, the only constant is that kids grow up learning loyalty to the state, not loyalty to truth.
How those in power play the game
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In a red state: Dissenting from the official story makes you “unpatriotic” or “ungrateful.”
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In a blue state: Dissenting makes you “bigoted” or “dangerous.”
Different punishments, same mechanism of control. The only real variable is which dogma your kid gets.
The real genius of this setup? Each side gets to feel morally superior while doing exactly the same thing as their opponents.
Red states beam about “restoring national pride” while blue states beam about “building equity.” In reality, they’re just carving the same ideological graffiti into your child’s mind with different-colored chalk.
Why this dicey public schooling mentality will end badly
We’re accelerating toward ideological segregation, not inching toward common ground. Every time one side wins a statehouse, the curriculum’s bound to swing hard in their direction. The other side seethes, plots its return to power, and seeks to reverse everything.
What does that teach kids? That “truth” is whatever the winning political party says it is, facts are flexible, history can be rewritten on demand, and people who disagree are enemies.
If you wanted to create a nation incapable of talking to itself without screaming, then congratulations—you’re living in it.
Origin of the problem
This isn’t some recent invention. Public schooling in America has always been state schooling.
From Horace Mann’s push in the 19th century to create “common schools” that would produce obedient citizens, to the Cold War’s “patriotic education,” to today’s dueling culture-war mandates, it’s the same structure with new coat after new coat of propaganda.
No, the system’s not broken. It’s working as intended.
The libertarian reality check
You don’t swap the red curriculum for blue, or vice versa if you want to solve this problem. You cut out the cancer, which means ending the government’s monopoly on education altogether.
That means:
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Let parents decide where and how their kids are educated.
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Stop forcing everyone to pay for a one-size-fits-few system that no one actually agrees on.
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Encourage real competition like certain private schools, charter schools, homeschooling co-ops, online programs, apprenticeships, self-directed learning, and trade training.
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Let ideas compete in a free market instead of in a political cage match.
But here’s the harsh truth…
If you’re celebrating Oklahoma’s America-First requirement because “finally our side is in charge,” you’re part of the problem. Same goes if you’re thrilled about blue states mandating “inclusive” curriculums because “finally the bigots will shut up.”
You’re fighting for your turn holding the whip, not the objective truth.
And here’s the punchline: One day, your side will lose power. The other side will take that same whip and use it on you. And when they do, don’t whine about fairness. You built the gallows together.
The mic drop
It’s not “our schools” when the state runs them. They’re the state’s schools. And the state doesn’t educate—it indoctrinates.
You want out of this endless Left vs. Right classroom war? Stop giving the state the chalk, just like those living in the Northern Region in my libertarian young adult fantasy series, Arcane Elemental Academy.
It’s got 32 schools, and they’re all competing for students. But they’re also competing for the right students, since each school pertains to a certain personality and learning style.
And before my protagonist, Yote Diamondback, attends Arcane, she’s subjected to intense indoctrination at a mainstream private middle school for Elementals, called Kenborne.
Yote fully supports the “traditional” education model, which she doesn’t realize is indoctrination. Until something happens that plants the seeds for her to start changing her mind.
In my prequel novella, Arcane Awakenings, you’ll experience that red pill moment alongside Yote.
